Tense/form/mood in Achievement strings

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Which tense/form/mood should achievements have?

Past (Built X buildings.)
0
No votes
Imperative (Build X buildings.)
0
No votes
Both (imperative before completion; past after)
1
100%
Something else (please post and explain)
0
No votes
 
Total votes: 1

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Dev-iL
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Tense/form/mood in Achievement strings

Post by Dev-iL »

I had a discussion with one of the Russian localizers about achievements. Namely, are their strings supposed to be "instructions" or "awards"?
  • If they're instructions/commands, they should likely be in the imperative form (i.e. "<You have to> Deconstruct X buildings <to get this>").
  • If they're awards for having done something then they should be in past tense (i.e. "<You have> Deconstructed X buildings <to get this>").
I have reason to believe that there are inconsistencies withing some localizations, because some localizers treat it as the first option, and others treat it as a second one.

To avoid this confusion, I suggest the developers make 2 forms of the achievement, one for when it's still not done (sounds like an instruction) and one for when it's already earned (sounds like an award; this will appear on Steam/GoG/...).

On a side note, for those of you who think that there should only be 1 option, please also give your opinion on the following matter: there's the issue of infinitive (to verb) vs. imperative (verb!) in some non-English languages for the instruction/command variant, roughly:
  • "<You> Deconstruct X buildings<!>"
  • "To deconstruct X buildings" (can be understood as "<Awarded for the> deconstruction of X buildings")
So which of all mentioned options would you go with?
Leading Hebrew translator of Factorio.

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